The present invention relates to a print control program and a print control method for controlling the operation of a printer. The invention also relates to a printer and a printing system in each of which a print control program is installed.
In recent years, from the perspective of terrestrial environment protection, it has been requested strongly to save printing paper and other printing materials in the field of office work including the operation of printers. Printers have resource saving functions that can promote resource savings by reducing the number of print sheets that the printers use. One of the resource saving functions is a double-side printing function, which is to print images on both sides of a sheet. Another of these functions is an aggregate printing function, which is to print two or more reduced images on one side of a sheet.
As an example, JP-2003-248576-A discloses a system that tabulates the reduction in the number of print sheets per user and ratios of reduction in the number of print sheets. The tabulation makes it possible to promote the use of functions capable of contributing to resource savings by users.
Some printers have post-treatment functions for prints in addition to resource saving functions. The post-treatment functions may be a stapling function, a punching function and a Z-folding function.
In many cases, conference materials and reports are sorted by contents and stapled or bound with string. Documents may be stapled and punched for binding with string by post-treatment functions of printers. Printing post-treatment functions may be set for the sizes and directions of images, the binding directions of print sheets, etc. so that the contents of prints can be appealing.
One of the stapling, punching and Z-folding functions may be selected for the printing of a conference material or a report. In this case, if one or more of the resource saving functions is selected, it/they may be set erroneously. The erroneous setting may change the sizes and directions of the images on the document, the binding direction of the print sheets, etc. from those intended by a user. This may make the contents of the prints less appealing, or make the prints hard to see depending on the relationship between the image direction and binding direction. As a result, the document may have to be printed again, with print sheets wasted.
If one or more of the resource saving functions are selected after one of the stapling, punching and Z-folding functions is selected, the resource saving function/s may be set correctly. Even in this case, it may be necessary to cancel the selection of the resource saving function/s, so that the operability may lower.